


The Wolf of Whitetail: The Book of Jacob

by hopecountyink



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Arson, Assault, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Child slavery, Fire, Gen, Graphic Description, Head Injury, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Major Character Injury, Past Child Abuse, Pyromania, Religious Conflict, Religious Cults, Religious Fanaticism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26047168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopecountyink/pseuds/hopecountyink
Summary: ***Notice - Taking a small break from updates for October and November so I can get Preptober/NaNoWriMo out of the way. Updates will resume after NaNo, so beginning of December***My take on the history of Jacob Seed. I am aware that canon timelines are kind of wonky between Far Cry 5, Absolution and The Book of Joseph (thanks to Ubisoft and their inability to have multiple strands of "canon" form one cohesive and coherent line), so I will be working more or less from my own timeline that I have stitched together from the canon provided.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Surfacing

The welts on his back scraped against the fabric of his t-shirt uncomfortably, like thorns over his broken skin. Earlier, Jacob’s younger brother, Joseph, had gotten the belt for reading a Spider-Man comic despite knowing that the Old Man forbade that sort of thing in his house. Jacob had been forced to listen to the snap of leather and his brothers muffled whimpers as each crack connected with supple skin, knowing that he had his own licks to come, and then some.

His crime? He was the one who had stolen the comic-book from the gas station on the corner and given it to Joseph, wanting to give his little brother a little glimmer of light in the darkness that was their childhood under the roof of Josiah “Old Mad” Seed.

Now Jacob had to shoulder the guilt of being responsible for why Joseph would not be able to sit up straight for at least a week.

Their mother was of no help. Gloria Seed, who had once been a bright and vibrant young girl, had been caught in a web of promises and lies designed to ensnare girls like her, then broken down brutally, in both body and spirit, as the fairy-tale evaporated like drying whiskey stains the cracked tile floor. These days, Gloria haunted the Seed house; nothing more than a grim spectre in a threadbare nightgown, hollow eyes and matted hair. Jacob suspected his mother likely was in need of some sort of intervention by medical professionals, but Josiah Seed didn’t believe in such things as doctors, dental care or any of the myriad other ways the government could leech any money you made back into their own coffers.

If one of the children had a toothache, it was because the Lord was punishing them for their wickedness, and the only remedies they had on hand were prayer or pliers.

Even when Gloria had been pregnant the year earlier, there were no visits to the doctor’s office. No blood tests, no scans. Nothing but the surety that God would either bless or curse the child growing in her womb.

Not even when Gloria went into labour a month early, no ambulance was called. It was only by the grace of God and one of the neighbours that the youngest, John, came into the world with neither the infant nor the mother suffering any lasting ill-effect.

Or at least that was how Old Man Seed told it.

The way Jacob remembered it was etched permanently on his young brain. His mother writhing and moaning on a dirty mattress, their father praying over the scene.

And the blood.

There was so much blood. Jacob didn’t know if it was normal for the so-called miracle of birth to be so horrifyingly gory, but the sight had terrified him, and until the moment John took his first breath and started screaming, Jacob was certain either the baby, his mother or both would perish.

John was two months shy of a full-year-old now, and for all intents and purposes, the picture-perfect bouncing baby boy he saw women stop in the street to coo and wave at as they were pushed along in their strollers along sunlit streets in the nicer part of town. John didn’t get to be cooed at by strangers though, or at least only on the absolute rarest occasion. Gloria never left the house, and of course, the Old Man didn’t get his hands dirty with “women’s work”, so Jacob had taken on most of the responsibility of taking care of his younger siblings, despite being just a child who was not even ten years old himself.

If it weren’t for Jacob, John’s diapers would almost always go unchanged until Josiah woke up his useless wife with his fists and shoved her into action. Jacob would ensure that both his siblings were bathed at least semi-frequently, even if their clothing didn’t reflect it, and when his mother shoved a fistful of crumpled bills or the battered rectangle of plastic Jacob would later learn was a credit card into his hands, he would make trips to the gas station store to buy enough formula, hotdogs and frozen pizza to stave off the ache of hunger in his and his siblings' stomachs, as well as a bottle or two of the cheapest gut-rot available for the Old Man. He would almost always take Joseph with him when he went to the store if only to make sure that the middle child did not suffer the brunt of Josiah’s ire in his brief absence. Sometimes he would take John too, but since they had no stroller to put him in, either Joseph or Jacob would have to carry him, which meant fewer hands to carry the things they had been sent to purchase, and Lord help either of them if they accidentally dropped the Old Man’s whiskey.

The back of Jacob’s shirt was stiff with drying blood, only adding to his discomfort as he sat in the dirt in the little hollow in one of the overgrown bushes at the back of the yard. From his hiding place, he still had a relatively clear line of sight back to the house in case Josiah was done ranting in the street out front and decided Jacob needed a few more licks just to be sure he’d gotten his point across, but the bush was thick enough that Jacob would be obscured enough that his father wouldn’t find him unless he was right on top of the kid.

This was the closest place Jacob came after he had been punished. Other times, he would take off entirely, roaming beyond the bounds of the neighbourhood into the more affluent areas, where kids and adults alike gazed upon him with scorn and suspicion, his clothing faded and tatty, bearing the hallmarks of poverty. Other times, he ventured even further afield, going so far as to reach the streets of downtown Rome, lined with shops and office buildings, the sidewalks broad and immaculate compared the cracked and broken asphalt and concrete of his own street. There, Jacob had discovered a movie theatre and a record shop; bright beacons of all the things Old Man Seed condemned, but to a child who had been deprived such things, they were Heaven on Earth.

Jacob would have run off downtown like a shot if it had just been himself who had pissed off the Old Man that day, but his responsibility for Joseph kept him in the yard, eyes and ears open for the sound of drunken hollering that made Jacob’s blood run cold.

Scrubbing at his face with dirty hands balled into fists, Jacob was determined not to cry. It was not that he would not allow himself to be upset. He just didn’t want to give that drunken bastard the satisfaction of seeing him do so, so he stayed in under the cover of the bush, absently picking at an old scab on his knee as he instead let his thoughts drift to how he’d fuck up the Old Man in a heartbeat the day he was big enough and strong enough to do so.

Gods, he wished he were older so that that time would come faster. When he had been younger than Joseph was now, Jacob had not known any better. He thought that all fathers hit their kids when they were bad, and that was just how fathers showed they cared; by beating the fear of God into their kids to straighten them out and keep them from sin.

When Jacob turned eight though, he witnessed the truth when he saw a classmate out in town with their father, smiling and happy while they sat in an ice-cream parlour. Jacob had stood across the street, eyes wide, staring with a longing he had always felt but could never articulate until that moment. From that moment, he knew that he had been lied to his whole life, as short as it was. He slunk off home with a sense that his eyes had finally been opened, and from that day forth, when he looked at his father, the only thing Jacob saw was a monster of a man in a dirty vest, reeking of sweat and alcohol, with multiple teeth missing, and that revelation gave Jacob a gift he hadn’t had before; power.

After that, Jacob wasn’t afraid anymore. Sure, it hurt like hell when his back was torn open by his father belt, and it upset him deeply, but the Old Man was weak, and when he ranted and raged, Jacob saw the displays for what they were; Josiah Seed was afraid of the world, and not nearly educated enough to be anything more than a bottom feeder who used fear to give himself a sense of importance and righteousness over others.

When the Old Man forced his children from their beds late at night and made them recite chapter and verse from memory while that strip of worn leather hung in his clenched fist, Jacob stared ahead, the words falling from his lips verbatim as his mind went elsewhere. And when that wasn’t good enough for Josiah, Jacob would take the strap in silence, taking each lick and adding it to the pile he would make his monument of hatred for the Old Man on, biding his time.

That was not to say that Jacob kept everything bottled up. After all, he was just a kid despite everything that had been piled onto his shoulders from the moment he could form complete sentences.

On the days when the Old Man was being particularly vicious and Jacob couldn’t slip away to other neighbourhoods, he took to taking out his emotions on whatever he could find within the confines of their street. The area was already dilapidated and run-down, with several houses standing completely abandoned and lost to rot and ruin. Jacob made these his kingdom of shit, picking up stones and hefting them at any remaining fragments of glass that still clung to peeling and rotten window frames like the last few teeth in his father’s gums.

When the windows had all been shattered to nothing, Jacob took his anger out on pieces of furniture, pocketknives stabbing into mouldering armchairs and ripping them open like a hunter gutting a fresh kill. He found an axe in a lean-to in the woods behind the row of houses, the headlong since rusted and the edge dulled, but the handle was sturdy, thankfully free from woodworm or termites. Jacob had made attempts to sharpen it on the curb edge, scraping away just enough of the flaking rust to reveal a thin gleam of steel beneath before he turned his attention to trying to chop things with it, his first few swings barely making a dent in the surface of an old dining table in one of the empty houses, but with enough time and repeated attempts, his arms began to build enough muscle.

By the time he was nine years old, Jacob Seed had enough strength and resentment for his father to eventually split the wood with that blunt blade.


	2. Wolfs Blood

_John’s howls and screams rang throughout the house._

He was two years old, and like all toddlers of that age, had only just found his feet, wobbling and bumping about in exploration with these new-found motor skills. Until he found the edge of the coffee table and the shiny glass of brown liquid tantalizingly within reach. Tiny hands had reached out for this new object of interest, not quite big enough or skilled enough to manipulate it properly as it was dragged to the edge.

John did not know what gravity was, nor did he have any concept of what happens to objects when they reach the edges of tables and topple over onto hard wooden flooring.

The sound of breaking glass immediately pulled the Old Man from his stupor on the ratty, motheaten couch, a steely gaze fixed upon the miniature human clutching the side of the table looking at the pool of liquid and jagged fragments around his bare feet. It had happened too quickly. Neither Joseph nor Jacob had been in the room when John had found their father's half-empty glass of whiskey, but the moment they heard the glass break, they knew all hell was about to break loose.

Jacob had expected their Old Man to come barrelling after him with belt in hand, demanding to know why he wasn’t watching his siblings and making the entire incident his problem, but Old Mad Seed never appeared in the doorway.

Instead, there was another crash; this time the sound of the table upending and destroying everything that had been on top of it. Then that god-awful sound.

The moment John started wailing, Jacob sprang to his feet and ran into the living room.

Josiah Seed was standing over his infant son, left hand twisted in the collar of John’s t-shirt, half hoisting the toddler’s little body into the air as he levelled multiple slaps against John’s torso, the force heavy enough to have even a full-grown adult reeling from each blow.

Poor John. His face was contorted in so much pain and fear. How could he possibly understand what he had done wrong, much less why he was being punished for it?

Jacob could only watch, frozen, at the scene before him, and though it only lasted a few short seconds before their Old Man dropped John back among the broken glass and spilt whiskey, a lifetime's worth of irreparable damage had been set into motion.

Josiah Seed swore, calling John something ungodly as he looked toward his eldest child, then stepped over the screaming infant, making a beeline for the kitchen to fetch an unopened bottle before grabbing Jacob by the back of his neck and shoving him toward the mess and slamming the front door behind him as he went out onto the porch to unleash his wrath on whichever unfortunate soul had the shit luck of passing by the Seed House at that very moment.

Jacob flinched as the door slammed, looking shellshocked as he briefly assessed the chaos, then swept John up from the floor, checking him over for any cuts from the broken glass. John squirmed painfully in his grasp, and when Jacob lifted his brother’s shirt, he saw purple splotches already starting to bloom across John’s back.

“Shh, John-John, it’s okay,” he murmured, carefully trying to bounce and rock his baby brother to soothe his distress, despite his own at witnessing John’s induction into their father’s brutality.

John would not settle, his little face bright red, eyes screwed tightly shut as he howled inconsolably. Jacob panicked, not knowing what to do to try to make it better, so he turned to more practical matters, setting John down on the couch, then running to get a dustpan and brush, and something to mop up the spilt whiskey with to give himself a moment to think and try to come up with a way to calm the incessant cries that were starting to make his skin crawl.

John was still crying when Jacob had finished cleaning up the mess, but his agonising screams had receded to a distraught cry of confusion, though still no easier for Jacob to hear as he returned to the couch and scooped John back up, passing Joseph hovering in the doorway of the small bedroom they shared as Jacob carried the baby out into the backyard in hopes that removing John from the room where he had been terrorised would lessen its effect on him.

Joseph fell into step behind his brothers in silence. Neither he nor Jacob needed to exchange words to discuss the gravity of the situation now that the Old Man had deemed John old enough to suffer the same torment that had plagued both of their lives since long before the youngest Seed child had been born.

Sitting down on the back steps, Jacob shifted John in his grasp, letting the two-year-old curl up and seek comfort in the crook of his older brothers shoulder, still babbling incoherently in question at what had just been inflicted upon him as Jacob made soothing noises and reassured him that everything was going to be alright.

It was a lie. Jacob knew that. Nothing was ever alright in that house, and it never would be so long as Josiah Seed still drew breath enough to lift his fist or belt in anger, but Jacob had to tell his siblings something to keep them going while they waited for some sort of light at the end of the tunnel.

Joseph sat at the other end of the step; head bowed. He was old enough now to feel the same weight that pulled at Jacob in knowing that this was not how normal parents behaved. However, something different had unchained itself within him. While Jacob was growing more defiant and hateful of their father’s deeds by the day, Joseph had learned to distance himself when punishment came, finding himself in a place where something altogether more divine reached into him. He had not yet told Jacob about what the Voice had told him, but he could see that he may need to intervene sooner or later if Jacob could not bear their father's wrath any longer.

Eventually, John bawled himself into exhaustion and fell asleep, sucking on his thumb, in Jacob’s arms. Only then did the eldest boy begin to relax, though he still looked straight ahead in a dead stare, his mind ticking over all the plans he had begun to make about how to get rid of the Old Man.

Taking John indoors, he put his baby brother down to sleep, hoping that John would be tired enough to sleep through most of the rest of the afternoon so that he had time to slip away for a while and get himself under control, because, although Jacob certainly had enough of his own wrath brewing under the surface to match the Old Man’s, he was still half the size and strength, and letting any of it out now would only deplete what he had stored up so far while earning him the beating of his life for daring even assume he could take on Josiah in a fight.

With Joseph promising to keep watch over John, Jacob told his brother that he wouldn’t be gone long, and that, if the Old Man started up again, Joseph should take John over to widowed lady across the street to keep him safe, since, as violent as Josiah Seed was, he would not say anything to a woman dying of cancer who wasn’t his wife.

With that, Jacob took off running, cutting through the woodland behind their street and out onto the street that would take him all the way downtown. Jacob wasn’t running for the purpose of speed. He would be exactly as long as it happened to take him. No, the boy ran because it gave purpose to the surge of adrenaline that would otherwise be directed at thoughts of burying that rusty axe head into Old Mad Seed’s skull.

If he’d had the time, Jacob would have snuck into the movie theatre to occupy his mind until his more violent impulses passed, enjoying how he could watch movie monsters on the big screen and imagine turning into one so he could terrorise the Old Man the way he had done to him and his brothers. Josiah Seed would quake in his boots at the sight of his oldest son transformed into a great, demonic beast with glowing eyes and dripping fangs, and Jacob found comfort many a night in that mental image.

Being short on time though, Jacob focused on another outlet he had discovered while wandering the streets of downtown Rome. There was a record shop on the corner by the park that had drawn him like a moth to a flame when he first heard the music that came drifting out of its open doors when he was praying for a sign.

When he had first found it, an elderly black gentleman named Del owned the place, and the store had rack upon rack of music dating back from even before Old Man Seed was born. Songs with soulful, powerful voices that spoke of freedom and love, and many other things Jacob Seed had yet to experience in his short life. The Old Man would have had a field day if he ever caught Jacob listening to music made by black folks. Hell, the drunk old bastard had even run a black couple out of their own neighbourhood after they moved in a few doors down not a year prior.

Jacob had been devastated to discover that Del was selling up and retiring due to poor health. Where else would the boy be able to seek sanctuary and be allowed to stay for as long as he needed, sitting on the floor of the storeroom with a crate of vinyl records Del kept to one side for him, along with an old record player and a set of headphones?

He need not have worried though. Del had spoken to the people he sold the store to, telling them about the little boy from the rough neighbourhood that came by sometimes in need of a place to shelter and decompress, and they had been most understanding of Jacob’s plight. So much so that when Jacob ventured timidly into the doorway, clearly wary of whoever had taken over the place, he had been recognized immediately and welcomed in.

The new owners were a man and a woman, named Ari and Jesse, respectively, and much younger than Del had been, perhaps in their late twenties at most from Jacob’s estimation.

What struck Jacob the most about them was that they wore the most peculiar clothing he had ever seen; shredded denim and plaid, hand-sewn patches that bore names of bands Jacob had never heard of, straps, safety pins and pierced ears, eyebrows and noses, topped with hair dyed in gloriously bright and rich colours, standing up on end with the sides shaved. Jacob liked to imagine that the Old Man would drop dead of a heart attack on the spot if he met them.

To young Jacob’s eyes, Ari and Jesse were the most intimidating and fascinating creatures he had ever come across. He quickly learned that Ari and Jesse considered themselves “punks”, and although they looked scary on the surface, these people were just as kind and welcoming to him as old Del had been.

Jacob’s heart sang when he was granted permission to stay, especially when it was revealed that the couple had kept the record player for him in the storeroom, though he was quite sad to find that the records Del had were no longer there. This disappointment was soon forgotten though as he began his exploration of all the new music that had been brought into the store, and Jacob worked his way voraciously through the dozens of new genres modern music had to offer.

Today though, when Jacob came to the shop in obvious distress, Ari decided to give him a new crate of records to listen to, plonking it down on the counter by the register and telling the kid to pick something to play in the store.

Jacob cautiously flipped through the crate until he found one that had cover art that really caught his eye; crudely drawn skeleton-like creatures against a purple and slime green backdrop stared up at him from the cardboard sleeve, emblazoned with the words “Misfits” and “Earth A.D.”, Jacob’s gaze lingering on it just long enough for Ari to take notice.

“Hey little dude, you got good taste,” Ari crooned in approval when he saw which one Jacob was lingering on. Ari then took the record from the crate and cued it up on the record player beneath the counter.

The sound of distorted feedback crackled through the speakers up on the walls around the store, and for a moment, Jacob thought he’d made a horrible choice until the frenetic, crunching noise of electric guitars and drums came chugging through, bringing with it a chorus of yelling along with the beat.

To Jacob’s surprise, the cacophony was not unpleasing to his ears. In fact, it spoke to that part of him that held some primal instinct to fight against his father. This music was an act of rebellion; a call to arms against all the things that tried to break Jacob’s spirit. That it just so happened to come wrapped up the imagery of the fictional monster movies he had been clandestinely consuming to escape the horrors of his reality made Jacob love it even more.


	3. The Vengeful One

_Jacob saw spots dancing before his eyes as hot metal scorched pale, freckled skin._

He was getting taller now. Not quite the size of their Old Man just yet, but oh was he catching up fast now that he had reached the age where things would change rapidly for him, both physically and mentally.

Josiah Seed had pulled both Jacob and Joseph out of school not long after the first time he had beaten John, deciding that, since the school was teaching them all manner of ungodly, and in his eyes bordering on the downright Satanic things that he didn’t approve of, the two older Seed boys would be better served in being kept away under the guise of “home-schooling” so that Old Man Seed didn’t have to endure the annoyance of a toddler who couldn’t keep his hands out of things that weren’t meant for him, nor the shadow of the hollow-eyed woman that was Gloria Seed.

This had only given Jacob more freedom to roam and fuelled his rebellion. Without the structure and routine that he had within the walls of the local elementary school, Jacob had gotten wild and unruly. Frequently, he brought the Old Man’s wrath upon himself whenever he got caught singing songs that had lyrics about “sticking it to the man” and rising up against oppression or cussing up a storm in language more colourful and profane than even Josiah Seed would utter.

Early that October afternoon, Jacob had come home from his wandering with a shiny safety pin jabbed through his ear, slightly crusted in dried blood from having driven it through his skin by himself, and a triumphant look upon his face at the jack-o’-lantern shaped bucket that swung from his arm, filled to the brim with candy.

Oh, how that sight rattled the Old Man something fierce.

Jacob was set upon the moment he was through the door, and when Old Man Seed’s eyes saw that little flash of metal through his son's flesh, the eldest child was slammed against the wall with enough force to make him dizzy, but that didn’t stop the sneer that formed on his lips; a challenge, plain as the fire that blazed brightly in Jacob’s eyes.

Their mother stood idly by, barely registering the violence before her, the iron in her hand moving back and forth, but not making any meaningful difference to the clothing beneath it. This was one of the few things Gloria was capable of managing in terms of keeping house, though as her mental state deteriorated over the years, the action had become that of a puppet going through the motions mechanically and without care.

Josiah had Jacob pinned by his neck, one arm across the boy’s collarbones as the other reached and snatched up the iron from his wife’s hand. Gloria didn’t flinch, the hand that had been clutching the iron briefly twitching in place, devoid of the object that triggered muscle memory.

Jacob’s hands came up to try to defend himself, but to no avail, the iron pressed viciously against his forearm, forcing a scream from him that ripped away the defiant smirk that had provoked the attack. The iron remained on Jacob’s skin until he thought he could smell the scent of searing flesh, vaguely like the meat on a barbeque in the well-to-do neighbourhood on a Summer’s day. Between having had his skull bounced off the wall behind him and the agonizing burning sensation, Jacob felt like he was going to pass out, nausea slamming into him and making him want to puke.

Old Man Seed hissed something at him through gritted, jagged teeth, Jacob catching only the reek of whiskey, not any of the words, and no sooner had the iron been removed from his skin, Josiah tore the pin from his son's ear.

Jacob heard the two words his father uttered that time.

_Fucking queer._

With that, Jacob was pulled back from the wall and thrown forcefully across the room. The boy stumbled and crashed to the ground face down, his head swimming.

He did not know what the word Josiah Seed had called him meant, but he knew it was not a kind word.

When he had told Ari at the record shop some of the things Old Man Seed shouted at people he didn’t like, Ari had told Jacob that his father sounded like a Nazi. Jacob didn’t know what that word meant either, but Ari had made him promise that, no matter what happened back home, Jacob would only ever judge people on their deeds and strength of character, never to treat people poorly based on the colour of their skin, their religious affiliation, who they loved or if they were physically or mentally disabled. Only Nazi’s and assholes did shit like that.

Jacob found the part about religious affiliation contradictory to his home circumstances, but Jesse pointed out that it was okay to hate his dad because what he did to Jacob and his brothers cancelled out anything to do with his religious beliefs.

As Jacob lay stunned on the floor, still reeling from the pain of the burns on his arm, he heard the Old Man take off his belt. That sound alone was enough to have him tense up on reflex, waiting for the sting of each lash, and the bite of the metal buckle into his back.

“I’m going to beat the fear of God into you, boy!” Josiah Seed growled, wrapping the excess portion of his belt around his fist before he lashed his son with it.

When Jacob heard that, he started laughing, despite the pain and knowing he was going to make things so much worse for himself. But he couldn’t help it. Something snapped upon hearing it, and even as the leather bit into the span between his shoulder blades, he laughed. Josiah Seed could beat him black and blue, day and night, but it would not have the intended effect; from that moment, Old Mad Seed could not beat the fear of God into Jacob. Quite the contrary, he beat it _out_ of him.

Josiah beat the kid until his arm got tired. Jacob was curled up on his side, his t-shirt torn open and stained with blood, a deranged giggle still falling out of him as he stared vacantly across the room, though it came in fits and starts now with how badly wounded he was.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Old Man Seed questioned with disgust, pausing for a moment before he hauled the child up to eye level. “You got the Demon in you, ain’tcha? I should have known. Should ‘a drowned you the moment you came out your momma with the Devils red hair.”

“Yessir,” Jacob slurred, barely able to focus his eyes on anything, then gathering phlegm in the back of his throat like Ari had taught him and spitting in Old Mad Seed’s face.

If Josiah Seed was shocked, it immediately manifested in a rage all over again as he punched Jacob in the face, breaking the child’s nose for the first time in his life and knocking at least one of his remaining baby teeth loose. Everything went black for Jacob the moment his father's fist connected, the darkness flashing with colourful static as it took over all his senses, his body giving out from under him.

Joseph peered out from the bedroom doorway, having dove for cover and hiding out of fear the moment the Old Man attacked Jacob, waiting for their father to lose his steam and inevitably go for his grog, then disappear elsewhere now that there wasn’t much of his older brother left to beat.

He feared for a moment that the Old Man had finally killed Jacob, as the boy was still now, sprawled out on the dirty wooden floor, face blackening under a mask of blood. Even their mother, through her mindless haze, had somehow taken her leave of the scene, and everything had fallen deathly quiet since John was thankfully out of harm’s way at kindergarten for another couple of hours, leaving Joseph to wonder how he would be able to manage to go to pick him up without Jacob if their brother truly was dead.

Creeping forward, Joseph tentatively called out his brother’s name.

It was not until he was much closer that he could see Jacob’s chest rising and falling with breath, telling the middle child that he was very much still alive despite his ordeal. Joseph wasn’t sure what to do. Jacob was not responding to his name, Joseph couldn’t carry him, and he did not seem like he would be in any state to get up and move of his own volition anytime soon.

Joseph grabbed his brother’s ankle and started to tug on it with all his weight, inching Jacob across the floor toward the bedroom. If he could get him far enough in, at least maybe Jacob could sleep it off and recover some before it was time to go collect John from school.

***

Jacob came to in a world of pain and disorientation. It was getting dark out when consciousness found him again. Joseph had been forced to go get John from school by himself, but the teachers knew who Joseph was, so they had relinquished John to him with very little questioning, and Joseph had managed to heat up some hotdogs for them both to eat while Jacob was still incapacitated.

It had been hard for Joseph to answer John when he asked what was wrong with their older brother, John frightened after seeing the damage their father had wrought on Jacob’s body and face, but the youngest Seed had some grasp that things had come to violence in the home again, as he still had his own patchwork of bruises from the last beating Josiah had given him. Still, the level of sheer brutality that Jacob had suffered that day was something neither John nor Joseph had witnessed before, even from the Old Man.

When Jacob finally awoke, he did not speak. There were stifled groans and whimpers as his brain remembered what had been done to his body, but no words.

Jacob’s mouth still tasted of blood as he tried to eat the few scraps of cold hotdog and bread Joseph had saved for him, the act causing him a great deal of pain, but he soldiered through it so that he didn’t upset his brothers all over again.

It wasn’t until night had fallen and he was certain the Old Man was practically comatose on the couch before Jacob dared speak, and then it only came in a broken croak through his swollen and bloodied face.

“I want to kill him.”

Jacob was lying on his side in the bottom bunk bed. His injuries made it much too painful for him to wear a shirt, much less lie on either his back or his front, and the pillow felt like a brick against the swelling around his eye.

Joseph leaned over and looked down at his brother from the top bunk, having let Jacob take the bottom until he healed enough to be able to climb up there again.

“You can’t,” he replied quietly, still gravely concerned for Jacob’s health.

“Why not? He deserves it.”

Joseph was not going to feed him platitudes about how Josiah Seed was still their father despite the cruelty and malice he ruled over the house with. There was no disputing that, but in the time Joseph had been hiding while the Old Man beat seven bells out of Jacob this time around, the Voice had come to him again, warning him that he had to restrain his brothers desire for vengeance as fate had chosen the three of them to accomplish a much loftier task.

The middle son confessed to Jacob about the Voice and what it had told him, half expecting him to laugh at the notion as he had at the Old Man, but Jacob didn’t laugh, nor did he show any indication he was only humouring him.

Joseph recanted for over an hour the things the Voice had revealed to him; about how there would be a time when the brothers would be called upon to gather together themselves a new family, lead them through the end of days and into the world reborn, one that was safe and pure, and free of anyone who would seek to cause them harm. Jacob listened in silence, though his attention never wavered for a moment. What his brother told him may seem far-fetched on the surface, but the vision he had for a world where they would suffer no longer appealed to him even more so than the idea of inflicting the Old Man’s brutality back upon himself.

And so, when Joseph finished telling him about what the Voice said, Jacob promised to stay his hand for now and let Old Mad Seed continue to draw breath.


	4. Change [In the House of Flies]

Jacob put his head back against the wall. His face was still a ruin of bruises, but the swelling had started to subside from around his eyes and nose. There had been quiet in the house. One like there had never been before. The Old Man had not raised another hand, much less his belt after the brutality that had left Jacob’s face and body in such a state.

That was what made Jacob certain the something was coming. He did not know what it was, but he could sense it like the static in the air before an oncoming storm.

If only he could have foretold what it was.

The hour was a little past eight in the evening when car headlights swooped across the bedroom ceiling, heralding the arrival of it. John was asleep in Jacob’s bed, peacefully curled up, clutching a teddy bear that was missing an arm. Joseph had been reading the Bible that was the only book the Old Man allowed the boys to have. Jacob sat in an almost meditative state, waiting for whatever was coming for him.

A series of rapid thuds on the front door followed moments after the lights.

The Old Man swore under his breath, cussing out whoever dared pull him from his drunken slumber on that same worn-out old couch that poked the boys with its springs if they sat on it wrong.

Footsteps shuffling across the wooden floor, creaking underfoot. Another cuss and then an authoritarian voice asking the Old Man if he was Josiah Seed.

The words “under arrest” pulled Jacob from his trance-like state, along with Joseph slamming the Bible shut.

Another moment and the bedroom door opened cautiously, the face of a women none of the boys had ever seen before peering around it in the dim light from the single, shadeless bulb in the lamp on the dresser that Joseph had been using to read by. When her gaze fell upon the boys inside, she quickly retreated and called the name of another stranger who, in turn, poked their head in.

The lady had a perpetual expression of concern deep-set into the lines of her middle-aged face.

She said something, but Jacob didn’t catch it. He knew who these people were though from the file attached to the clipboard clutched in the woman’s hand.

In the living room, Josiah Seed was cussing up a storm at three police officers, one cuffing his hands behind his back while another read him his Miranda rights. The third, a woman, approached Gloria Seed, still haunting a shadowy corner as always, apparently unaware that anyone had entered her home as she stared vacantly at a spot of mildew on the peeling wallpaper.

The lady with the clipboard was crouched down now, talking to Joseph, while her associate, a tall man in an ill-fitting suit approached John, who had now been woken by the presence of strangers in the room. He fussed a little, but the man reassured him that they were there to help, going so far as to ask John if it was okay for the lady to look at his back. It wasn’t as though they really needed to do so to confirm what they had been called for. Jacob’s face told the story far more clearly than the half-faded marks on his baby brother did.

Jacob went back to leaning against the wall. Even when the man and woman told the boys to get together any belongings that they wished to take with them, as they were being taken away from the Seed house, at least for a little while.

The Seeds had nothing by way of suitcases or duffle bags to pack their personal effects into, so the man left the room, returning moments later with a roll of trash bags.

From the corner of Jacob’s eye, the sight seemed an oddly fitting metaphor for their entire lives.

John was too young to know how to pack anything, so Joseph set about filling up one of the trash bags for him once his own possessions had been dumped out of the dresser and shoved hastily inside the plastic sack.

Seeing his brothers clutching a trash bag each didn’t spur Jacob into action. Joseph had to physically give his older brother’s shoulder a shake to get him to move, and then all he did was grab a couple of handfuls of clothing from the drawer and toss them in. Nothing else went into Jacob’s bag, and if it weren’t for the confused and concerned imploring of the two social workers, he might not have taken anything at all, but wherever they were going, they apparently needed _something_.

The boys were then escorted out into the living room, just in time to see Old Man Seed being frogmarched out of the door in handcuffs, struggling against the strong-arming of the two male officers.

Gloria put up no fight whatsoever as she was also read her rights. Not that it mattered. She probably didn’t even hear them. The female cop spoke briefly to the male social worker, mentioning something about needing to radio for a psychiatric evaluation on the boys' mother, but other than that, the social workers were free to take the boys into something called “protective custody”.

Jacob and his brothers were taken outside into the frigid November air. None of them had coats or shoes on, and the icy wind bit at Jacob’s wounds fiercely as they were directed to follow the woman and get into the car she had waiting for them at the curb.

Inside the car, John was buckled into the middle seat between his brothers and they were left alone for several minutes while the woman and the man reconvened with the police, notes written and documentation checked and signed as Gloria was put into the back of a separate patrol car from her husband.

Joseph turned around in his seat to watch, spying their Old Man still ranting and raving in the back of the cruiser, his arms behind his back. John was getting upset. He didn’t understand what was happening. All he knew was that he had been woken by strangers and pulled out of the only home he had ever known. Joseph explained who the people were and that they had come to help them so that their father couldn’t hurt them anymore, calming John enough to let him settle back down again, still clutching the disfigured teddy as tightly as he could muster.

Jacob had gone back into his meditative state. He did not look back at the house, the police or either of their parents. A brief thought passed through his mind that this would likely mean no more visits to the record shop, though, with the way word had a tendency to get around town, Jacob doubted it would take long for Ari and Jesse to find out why he had suddenly vanished. This was the only flicker of sadness he had for the place. Other than that, Jacob had already completely disconnected himself from every memory or bit of sentimentality the Seed house might have ever held for him.

The social workers got into the car as the two police cruisers left, the woman turning around to the boys with a slightly panicked smile, assuring the boys that they were safe now and that they were going to be taken somewhere where they would never have to suffer, go hungry or be in pain ever again.

They drove for over an hour, the broken-down neighbourhood sliding out of view behind them, replaced by cleaner, nicer suburbs, then out onto the freeway with only streetlights and signs for turnoffs to other towns flashing by for a while.

Joseph saw a sign for Atlanta, but the vehicle left the freeway before they reached the bright skyline of the city looming ahead of them, taking them back through more suburbs and along a small-town street before finally pulling up at a large brick building that bore a sign that suggested it was a medical centre.

When the Seed siblings were brought inside, they were led into a quiet room alone for around half an hour before each of them was collected by more social workers, and what were apparently doctors, assuring that the brothers' separation was only temporary while they conducted interviews and physical exams to document just what sort of damage had been dealt to them at the hands of Old Mad Seed.

Each of the brothers was asked all manner of strange and invasive questions, photos were taken of any and all signs of injury they had, and Jacob almost laughed when they produced a rag doll and asked if either of their parents had ever touched him inappropriately beyond the obvious signs of brutality.

When the questioning was over, Joseph and John were reunited and put into a room that was furnished with toys and storybooks, with the lady who had come to the house supervising them. Jacob’s interrogation and subsequent physical exam took longer due to him needing x-rays and immediate medical treatment for the wounds Josiah had inflicted upon him only a few days prior, the burns on his arm still blistered horribly and at risk of infection without being properly cleaned and dressed. There was also concern from the doctor about how his broken nose might affect his breathing if it set wrong and caused a deviated septum.

Once Jacob’s injuries had been tended to as well as they could be for being multiple days old, he was also finally brought back to the room with his brothers and it was close to midnight before they were informed that they were being taken somewhere else, to a county orphanage that would become their new, temporary home until a better, loving, permanent one could be found for the three of them.

Oh, how Jacob had wished he had known at the time how wrong they were going to be.


	5. Arsonist's Lullabye

The social workers had been dead wrong.

All those promises made about how things were only going to get better now that they were out from under the rule of their father’s iron fist, that they would find a new, loving home in next to no time? Nothing but empty platitudes from a script designed to make them accept their new reality more easily.

Life in the orphanage was not nearly as bad as things had been in the Seed house, but they were far from idyllic either. At the very least, they had a roof over their heads, regular meals that were moderately more nutritious than their old diet of hotdogs and pizza, and used clothing that had been donated, but still in far better condition than their old garments. Beyond that, they were together, even though they languished in the orphanage for months after they were taken out of their home, watching younger, less damaged children come and go as they were picked first from the bunch. Nobody seemed to want to take on three kids at once. It was always babies under the age of five at most that many of the couples who came through desired, though, if it weren’t for him and Joseph, Jacob was sure that John would have been snapped up just as quickly, even though he was six now.

Jacob had started to believe that they were going to be at the orphanage until he at least aged out of the system and would then hopefully be allowed to assume legal guardianship over his siblings once he turned nineteen, but that idea was shattered when the three of them were suddenly plucked from their home under state care to be shipped off to a childless couple who owned a farm out in Silver Creek.

Again, they had been promised Heaven on Earth and encouraged to start calling their new “parents” Mom and Dad. Jacob hadn’t even called their biological parents by such terms of endearment, much less a pair of strangers.

But once the paperwork had been signed, all T’s crossed and I’s dotted, and the social worker's car retreated down the dirt road and out of sight, all those promises disappeared with it.

The couple did not want the joy of parenthood. They wanted free labour, setting Jacob and his brothers to work from the moment they woke before the Sun had come up until they passed out from exhaustion late into the night. The only respite they got from the backbreaking tasks set upon them came during the hours when they went to school. When they returned, they were fed only enough to ensure they had enough energy to work, and on weekends, there came no rest at all.

They weren’t even permitted to sleep in the couple’s farmhouse, instead relegated to the barn as though they were livestock, and if any of the brothers were caught trying to rest or made attempts at defiance, they were whipped just as cruelly as the Old Man had, and denied sustenance beyond bread and water, Jacob likening the experience to actual slavery, as he had recently learned about from his schoolbooks, from the way they had been torn from their home and essentially sold into state-sponsored servitude, minus the shackles and chains.

It barely took a year for this new torture to start Jacob back down the path of plotting how he would bring it to an end.

The couple had made a grave error in not keeping him under supervision at all times, and often, he would slip off to some far corner of the farm, having sequestered a box of matches from the kitchen while cooking one of many dinners that neither he nor his brothers would get to taste. Late at night, after he was certain both his brothers were asleep, and the lights of the farmhouse had gone out, he would steal himself away with that box to a spot he had learned was out of the line of sight of the farmhouse, taking matches one by one, striking them and letting them burn down to his fingertips as he watched the bright orange glow with fascination, the beasts that lived in the darker corners of his mind coming forth to bask in thoughts of chaos and destruction once again.

It didn’t take long for those urges to become all-consuming. Within a matter of months, the torment Jacob and his brothers had suffered under the couple came to a head, and this time, Joseph would not be able to talk him out of it.

One night in late August, those thoughts of fire would no longer let Jacob sleep, calling out to him almost hypnotically.

Within moments, he had gone over to the garage by the farmhouse and acquired a full can of gasoline. He then woke John and Joseph and led them outside, not disclosing his plan to either of them, but it quickly became apparent when he took up the gas can and began pouring it out inside the barn, trailing the liquid to just outside the open barn door before taking out one of the remaining matches and striking it, watching the flame swell in his hand for a second before tossing it into the gasoline and stepping back to observe the way it spread rapidly, catching the entire barn on fire within seconds.

Next, he set all the animals loose, turning his attention to setting the stables ablaze once the horses were all clear.

Between the gasoline and all the fresh straw, they went up like a tinderbox, and Joseph and John sat in silence as they watched their brother’s campaign of destruction.

The sound of frightened horses roused the couple from their slumber and they rushed out of the farmhouse still in their nightclothes, too distracted by the inferno to notice that Jacob had found himself an axe handle from somewhere, stalking up behind the couple with a menacing glare that was lit up in gold.

The man turned only to be struck hard across the face, stunned momentarily by the blow. A second brought him to his knees, and a third had him on his back, face a mask of glossy red as he choked on his own blood, the wife letting out a howl of a scream.

As the terrified woman bent in the dirt beside her husband, wailing horribly in a panic, Jacob discarded the handle and went back to the garage for more gasoline, then entered the farmhouse to complete his work in rending destruction wholesale upon those who had dared think they could treat him and his siblings as chattel.

Flames began to grow from within the garage after Jacob had gone inside the house, and by the time he returned, both the outbuilding and the house had joined the hellscape of the other burning farm buildings, the smoke and fire climbing higher into the night sky, and once the gas tanks in the cars caught alight and exploded, it was certain that Jacob’s handiwork had drawn notice from the next farm over as the sound of sirens came drifting over the cacophonous roar of the blaze.

When the police, ambulance and fire department arrived on the scene, there was little left of the farm that could be salvaged.

All three of the Seed siblings watched on, transfixed, as the woman continued to scream over her stricken husband, and for a brief moment in the confusion, the police officers were left perplexed at what had happened until they saw that Jacob’s skin and clothing were splattered with the husband's blood. Once they saw that, everything fell into place.

Jacob freely admitted to what he had done. Hell, he outright delighted in the fact that he’d done it, even if it meant he and his brothers would be sent back to the orphanage.

As the officers attempted to cuff him though, Jacob wrestled free briefly, running back to his brothers to reassure him that they would be reunited soon and that he would see to it that they were never separated again before one of the officers tackled roughly to the ground and finally got him into restraints.

Jacob had been wrong, however.

When the police officers got him into the patrol car, just as had happened with their Old Man, Jacob didn’t know yet that that would be the last time he would see either of his siblings until they were all adults and after they had all suffered hardships worse than he could have imagined for any of them.

Only John and Joseph went back to the orphanage.

Jacob was taken first to the police department in Atlanta for interview and processing, as well as a psychiatric evaluation since what he had done was considered grossly malevolent and calculated for a fifteen-year-old boy.

Jacob was charged with arson and aggravated assault, though he escaped a charge of attempted murder despite the prosecution trying to push for it, along with trying to persuade the court to have him tried as an adult for his lack of remorse and apparent planning of the attack. The catalogue of abuse he had suffered over the years until that point spared him though, with several psychiatrists hired by the defence testifying in his favour, and he was sentenced to be incarcerated in a juvenile detention centre until he either turned eighteen or committed a crime that would allow for him to be prosecuted as an adult.


	6. The Devil Within

He had been here just shy of a week and already most of the guards had added him to their mental lists of troublemakers.

Before Jacob’s case had been heard, they’d held him in a secure psychiatric for children, awaiting evaluation to find out if the abuse he had suffered had been the driving force behind his violence and destruction, suggesting that he would be mentally unfit to be tried, or whether he was sane, and therefore just a bad kid.

Those weeks in the hospital had been a welcome respite in the turbulence that surrounded him. They had not put him on any medication while he was there, but the staff were generally pleasant and nice to him, even after what he had been charged with before his arrival. Jacob supposed that was entirely just because it was their job to be nice to the poor, unfortunate, broken children and troubled teens housed within the ward’s walls.

Jacob’s mental health had been poked and prodded at by half a dozen doctors by the time he was due in court. The prosecution wanted him tried as an adult, but Georgia law took that away from them, and it worked in Jacob’s favour that both John and Joseph had given statements when questioned that backed up his version of events, and how the couple at the farm had essentially treated them as slave labour.

Still, as much as the psychiatrists and psychologists the defence hired argued that it was highly understandable that Jacob would turn to drastic measures after everything he had been through, they could not deny that the boy was of sound mind enough that his actions had been planned, and methodically so.

So, with that, Jacob was shipped off to a juvenile detention centre to serve out the rest of his sentence.

They might have dressed it up with a softer sounding name, but for all intents and purposes, it was still a prison. The only difference was that the inmates were not even legally old enough to vote, much less do anything else adults were free to enjoy.

On the day that Jacob Seed arrived, brought in on a bus that differed from the kind that took children to school only in colour, he was assigned a number, given clothing that was identical to every other child in the detention centre, advised of mealtimes and other pertinent information, and finally brought to the cell that would be his home for the next three years.

It took him less than three hours to get into his first fight.

He had been sitting on the lumpy, slightly hard mattress in the metal bed frame in the small room when one of the other inmates, a boy who Jacob guessed must have been at least a year older than he was from the stockiness of the other's frame and the smattering of chin hair starting to poke through between an outbreak of acne, decided he was going to make sure that Jacob knew the lay of the land and how the hierarchy was structured. This boy held the belief that he was somewhat of the top dog among the boys on their wing of the detention centre and clearly had had extraordinarily little experience of anyone attempting to call that belief into question before.

The boy had made the grave mistake of underestimating the quiet, gangly kid with the red hair and freckles. Partly because he had not been privy to the information that would have told him exactly why Jacob had been locked up in the first place. If that had been common knowledge, perhaps he would have thought twice about his assumption that Jacob’s silence when the boy spelt out who was in charge meant that he was soft.

Lunchtime had rolled around. Jacob had taken up a spot at an empty table by himself before the older boy and some of his cronies had gotten to the dining hall.

After the boys had acquired their own rations, they had deliberately surrounded Jacob in an obvious attempt at further intimidation, comments traded that insulted his appearance, as well as vile things, said about his mother.

Little did they know that nothing they could say about either of his parents would ever compare to the truth, and Jacob simply sat there, saying nothing as he chewed slowly.

This imperviousness quickly irritated the ringleader, annoyed that Jacob was not reacting the way he wanted him to. In a quick, sweeping motion, the boy grabbed the edge of Jacob’s tray and pulled, sending it skidding across the surface of the table and off the end, dumping Jacob’s food all over the filthy floor.

“Oops,” was all the boy managed to say before Jacob’s eyes flicked up at him coldly, baring his teeth in a threatening smile.

There wasn’t another moment to react as Jacob leapt over the table in a split-second, sending the ringleader sprawling backwards off his chair with Jacob on top of him, raining down blows to his face and body that didn’t abate even as the boy's friends attempted to pry him away.

It wasn’t until the guards intervened and hauled Jacob up from the boy, who was now whining and curled in a foetal position to protect himself from the assault, that the altercation ended.

That had been the start, but it was far from finished. Over the following month, tensions escalated between the boy and Jacob, the boy taking great offence to have his position rocked by a newcomer, especially in such a public setting, and the resulting ridicule he had begun to receive from other inmates who suddenly realised he wasn’t nearly as tough as he made himself out to be.

One night, around the middle of Jacob’s second month inside, those tensions reached a head. His enemy had decided once and for all that he wanted to re-establish his dominance and arranged to attack Jacob when he figured Jacob would least expect it. Again, his assumptions would prove to be his downfall since it had become abundantly evident to Jacob that this kid really was not all that bright, despite having a couple of years on him.

Jacob had made his own preparations for just this kind of incident. Unbeknownst to both the guards and the other inmates, Jacob had gotten quite good at fashioning discreet improvised weapons for self-defence, sharpening the end of a plastic toothbrush into a serviceable shiv by grinding it against a patch of exposed brickwork that was concealed by his bed.

When the boy took his moment to attack, Jacob was ready for him.

All it took was for Jacob to use the boy's physical frame to his advantage, waiting until the boy lunged to pivot and use his weight against him to change the momentum and send him crashing to the ground, hitting his head and leaving him stunned as Jacob pounced, pressing the sharpened point of the shiv into the hollow beneath the kid’s jaw, letting it graze uncomfortably against the inside contour of the bone.

The boy whimpered, eyes wide with fear as his head cleared and he realised there was an improvised blade at his throat.

“Look, man, you win, okay? Just, please, get the fuck off me!”

Jacob pressed a little harder until the shiv drew a little blood, that same smirk curling his lip as he watched the boy plead for mercy, knowing that it would only take the tiniest bit more pressure to split open his jugular. For a long moment, Jacob genuinely entertained the thought, until he considered that, if he killed this boy, then that would give the court system something to keep him locked up for far longer than three years for, and that would prevent him from getting back to his brothers.

The thought of leaving his brothers alone in the world without him for any longer than he was already going to be forced to made his blood run cold. What if they ended up with another family who was like the farm couple? Or worse? It didn’t bear thinking about for him, so, as those thoughts swam through his head, he forced himself to let up his grip on the boy, though he made sure to do so in a slow and deliberate manner that left no doubt in the other teen's mind that Jacob was not someone he should ever want to try and fuck with again.

Once the boy was loose and able to pick himself up from the floor, he just stared at Jacob, fear and confusion gripping him as he tried to fathom what Jacob was, much in the same way Old Man Seed had peered at him that day Jacob had snapped and shown him that he no longer had control over him.

With that, the boy backed out of Jacob’s cell and darted away to his own before they drew attention from anyone else, especially the guards, but from that moment on, no other inmate in the detention centre made the mistake of crossing Jacob Seed.


	7. Points of Authority

Three months.

Jacob had been in the detention centre for three whole months, and though he didn’t really get into fights with the other inmates anymore, he still found plenty of ways to cause trouble and piss off the guards, having straight-up assaulted a few of them.

One such occasion had him hauled into the warden’s office this grim December afternoon, not more than a week before Christmas.

Warden Stone was an average-height, stocky, middle-aged man who had been career military before a medical discharge made a civilian out of him, and the call of a disciplinary role had been a natural fit for his type. He wasn’t nearly as built as he’d been in his service years, but he hadn’t exactly let himself go either, clothing still immaculately pressed, boots polished and gleaming, topped with that good old regulation buzzcut that sat above the single roll of flesh that spanned the back of his broad neck.

Most of the kids that came through the place took one look at the guy and were intimidated enough to immediately know who oversaw the place that would be their entire world for the duration of their sentence.

Jacob Seed was not intimidated in the least.

Flipping briefly through the file on his desk, Warden Stone refreshed his memory on which of his charges was sitting in the chair opposite, the file telling him that this wiry almost-sixteen year old with the red hair and freckles, who had had a considerable growth spurt since his arrival, had come from the worst possible start in life, only to be bounced around the foster system before landing here.

The guards had already labelled the kid a lost cause. They had seen his type before. Kids who couldn’t be tamed, couldn’t be taught manners. Kids who didn’t give a fuck about becoming a productive member of society when they grew up, and would only move on to real jail time when they got out into the great big wide world on their own.

Stone squinted at the report that said as much, a statement from a guard Jacob had headbutted in the face, then glanced upward at the boy across the desk, sizing everything up momentarily before closing the file and sitting back in his chair.

“Jacob Seed.”

The words rolled off Warden Stone’s tongue easily, stern but not immediately condemning as so many others had been before him.

“It says here you sent one of my men to the hospital with a broken nose. Is that right?”

“Yessir,” the boy answered, not an ounce of remorse.

_Sir._

The hallmark of a Southern boy if Stone had ever heard one, especially one that had known the lick of his fathers’ belt if his file was anything to go by.

Stone steepled his fingers in front of him for a moment in thought, considering something.

“The guards all seem to think you’re a troublemaker, Jacob. I’d like to know what you think?”

Jacob shrugged, not really understanding what the Warden was asking him. As best Jacob knew, he was everything everybody said about him, devoid of any self-applied labels.

“You’ve been in the foster system too, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, so?”

Warden Stone was beginning to build a picture. The kid’s attitude was nothing to be sniffed at, but it had a tell and one that Stone had seen hundreds of times before, even back in his military days. This kid was a fighter, through and through. He had been fighting just to exist since the day he was born, and that had given him an understandable chip on his shoulder, manifesting in a constant state of defensiveness and fuelled by anger.

“People have always written you off as a bad kid, haven’t they, Jacob? Told you that you would never amount to anything? Any of this ringing true with you?”

Another shrug, another sneer, Jacob’s shoulders setting tensely despite his attempts to put on an air of not giving one solitary fuck about what the Warden or anyone else thought about him.

“I’m going to tell you what I think,” Stone continued, a slight sigh carrying his words as he leant forward in his seat again.

“I think you’re a smart kid, Jacob. Far more so than anyone has ever given you credit for, and I think that nobody has ever really given you a chance to show it.”

Jacob stared blankly, his nostrils flaring just a little.

“If I’m so smart, how come I ended up in here?” he answered, quirking an eyebrow in challenge.

“Because they pushed you to breaking point? Your file says you were sent here for setting fire to your foster family’s farm and assaulting your father-,”

“He wasn’t my dad.” Jacob interrupted sharply.

“No, you’re right. He was not, but I also see that your biological parents were the reason you ended up in foster care in the first place. You and your two younger brothers, correct?”

“Yeah, so what?”

Jacob sniffled slightly with his last response. The siblings were a clear sore point, no doubt still somewhere in the system. Jacob had done what he had done not just out of anger, but to protect them.

Warden Stone had gotten adept at reading the troubled kids and young men who passed through his halls. Jacob was no exception, and the more Stone could get the kid talking and reacting, the clearer an image Stone could build on just exactly how to help this one get back onto the right track and heal some of those wounds he was walking around with.

“I believe you were protecting them that night you lit the farm on fire. I have seen social services reports. I know that they were using the three of you as child labour. I’m sorry that happened to you all.”

Jacob wasn’t at all used to sympathy, especially from an authority figure, and it was starting to catch him on the back foot, making him second-guess how to respond and chipping away at the carefully constructed wall he’d built up over the years. Suddenly, someone saw through all of that. Saw him and recognised that there was still a frightened little boy who had seen too much in his short years at the core of it all.

“Normally, when one of the inmates assaults a guard, naturally, there are consequences. However, I do not believe punishment will do any good in this case. Jacob, you’re not the first boy to come through here that has suffered a horrific childhood, and as a result, learned to lash out because it’s the only thing you know how to do to protect yourself, and you certainly won’t be the last.”

Jacob rolled his eyes, still trying to throw out anything that would cover how he was internally trying to nail the walls back into place.

“No, I’m not going to punish you, or even keep this incident on your file. Instead, what I am going to do is recommend that you be assigned to some creative and educational programmes we run in here. Jacob, I want to give you the chance to prove yourself to be better than everyone has ever thought you were before. I believe that, with some structure and the proper support, you would rise to the challenge I am setting you and excel at it.”

“What does that even mean?” Jacob laughed mockingly, thinking the Warden spoke like some of those rich folks in the better neighbourhood he roamed as a child.

“It means that I am giving you a choice, Jacob. One; you could continue down the path you’re currently on, keep causing trouble, and make your remaining time here hell for everyone involved, including yourself, or Two; you take the offer on the table, attend the classes and sessions I am recommending you to, where you will have the opportunity to show people what you are truly capable of, in an environment that is designed to help you thrive, as well as learn skills that you will be able to carry forward and put to good use when you do leave here.”

“So, like school?”

“That would be part of it, yes. We have a robust educational programme that would allow you to study and graduate at a level equivalent to having attended high school, even with some of the gaps you have had in your schooling. If necessary, we can also assign a tutor for one to one sessions to help bring you up to speed, and it would also grant you access to the centre’s library, rather than just the book cart.”

Okay, Stone had his attention.

One of the things about all of the instability that had frustrated Jacob so much as a child was that, on the occasions when he got the chance to attend school, he was good at it, and, more importantly, he enjoyed it, given that it provided the sort of challenge his brain naturally craved and fed his curiosity to learn about the world around him.

“So, uh, what’s the other part?” he asked, the bravado was gone from Jacob’s tone now, replaced by a tentativeness that brought his voice down to only slightly more than a murmur.

“Well, we have a few therapeutic programmes, chiefly art and music therapy, though we also have had some success in mentorship and-,”

“Music?”

The word was emphatic as it came out of Jacob’s mouth. Oh, how he missed his music.

“Do you like music, Jacob?”

“Yes Sir.”

A smile formed on Stone’s lips at the boys shift in demeanour, a clear sign that the Warden has been correct in his assessment that Jacob was sorely in need of something more productive to channel all his anger, pain and the natural chaotic energy that seemed to radiate from his very being, into.

“Good, because our music programme would allow you to learn to play almost any instrument if you so wished, so long as it is one we have in the music room. We have an instructor come in three times a week to oversee the programme, so if you’re interested, I would be more than happy to put your name down for it.”

“I’d like that.”

“Excellent. Well, leave it with me and I will make the necessary arrangements to get you signed up, but I see no reason why you couldn’t make a start by the end of next week. How does that sound?”

Jacob was nodding, a smile breaking through his previously blank exterior that almost hinted at excitement. When he had first been pulled into Warden Stone’s office, he had assumed he was going to be reprimanded for another assault. Being given the opportunity to carve out a brighter future for himself had been the last thing he had anticipated.

“Thank you, Sir. You won’t regret it, I swear.” He enthused, practically jubilant as the Warden dismissed him from the office.

“Jacob,”

Jacob had just put his hand on the door when his name had him whipping around, his heart leaping into his mouth as the fleeting sense that it was a cruel hoax was about to be revealed.

“See to it that you don’t make me eat my words, alright? I mean it, you behave yourself, and your remaining time here will be beneficial to you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.”


	8. An Ode to No One

Structure felt good.

Jacob had been just a little bit sceptical at first when the Warden suggested he might thrive in one of the detention centre’s educational programmes, but as it turned out, Warden Stone had been correct in his assessment, and Jacob liked that he was good at something for once.

There had been some considerable gaps in his education, from the period in which Old Man Seed had pulled him and Joseph out of school after an embarrassing incident in front of the whole school when the Old Man went on one of his biblical tirades upon finding out that his two eldest children were to be taken to see a play at the local theatre, and Josiah had deemed the content of it to be just as bad, if not a far greater evil than those pumped out by the government via television and radio.

God forbid the Seed kids learn anything cultural or artistic. Literally.

There were also areas Jacob had fallen behind in when he and his brothers had been bounced from one temporary home to another and back to the orphanage for a spell before the couple at the farm. Teachers at those schools had been somewhat sympathetic, but those state-run schools didn’t really have anything in place to help him catch up to his peers at the time.

Now, time was more or less all Jacob had at his disposal, and the educational programme in the centre was far better funded and purposely geared toward rehabilitation to make inmates productive members of society when they aged out at eighteen or their sentences were served, whichever came first. Jacob had a little over two years to make up for what he had missed out on and catch up, and the fact that he had so much time on his hands otherwise worked remarkably in his favour.

Inside of four months, Jacob had closed those gaps in his knowledge and completed all grade-related testing that came along with them, so by the fifth month, he wasn’t just studying at the level appropriate for his age, but showing just how bright and intelligent he was for the first time in his life, particularly in his ability to grasp complex math, and his affinity for history and geography, Jacob demonstrating that he could memorise place names and important dates and events with very little effort, as well as showing a keen interest in historical empires and conflicts.

Jacob’s daily routine became almost regimented, like clockwork, as he would wake up, go to breakfast, then head straight to the classroom, where he would, breaking only for lunch and daily exercise in the yard outside, where he would usually pick up a quick game or two of basketball with some of the other boys since he had both a height advantage and a quickness on his feet that made him quite a capable player. After, it would be back to his studies for the rest of the afternoon until dinner, with the time after often spent in the library working his way voraciously through the offerings there until they kicked him out just before lights out.

The library had a sizeable fiction section alongside the educational stuff, and Jacob found himself dipping into quite a few genres, though he most often pored over titles that ran into sci-fi and fantasy most often, as both genres had a generous smattering of the conflict and historical context of his schoolbooks, but with the added bonus of letting him escape from the confines of the real world into dozens of new worlds of both his own imaginings and those dreamt up by the authors. These rich fantasy settings were the stuff the Old Man forbade, and free from that tyranny, Jacob’s mind could run free through all of those things he’d never been allowed before. For the very first time, Jacob considered himself to be happy, or at least as close to it as he had ever experienced. He still sometimes indulged his darker thoughts and impulses, but now they took on new context and colour as he ran them through fictional settings, creating his own stories and sagas in his mind for the hours when he was locked in his cell and the library was out of reach.

Beyond the books though, lay Jacob’s first and true love, music.

It wasn’t quite the same as the experience he had in the days when he would haunt the record store, listening to countless artists sing of things that intrigued him, and wring glorious sounds from instruments he could only dream then of playing.

Now had come an opportunity though for him to finally get his own hands on those instruments in hope of learning to play them with the skill he’d encountered from others.

The moment he set foot in the music room; Jacob was in his element. The room had a decent collection of instruments that would usually be found in orchestral arrangements, but woodwind and brass didn’t interest him half as much as strings and percussion did, especially in the form of guitars and drums, the audio weapons of rebellion from all of those punk bands Ari and Jesse had exposed him to. It only made sense that Jacob honour them both with the choice of what he would learn to play, entertaining the thought that, perhaps, one day in the future, they might happen upon a record with a familiar name on it, and find that little boy they knew was all grown up and still rocking hard.

Naturally, Jacob’s first attempts to play were clumsy and fumbling, as anyone who had never picked up an instrument before would be, and Jacob would be lying if he said that he didn’t feel at least a little twinge of discouragement when it turned out that he wasn’t going to immediately excel at this endeavour.

Warden Stone had spoken to the music instructor before Jacob joined the programme though and had advised him that the boy showed a particular interest when music had been suggested. With this in mind, the instructor had been sure to remind the boy that everything worth doing takes practise, including learning to play an instrument. They sat Jacob down and showed him a few basic chords on the guitar to get him started, as well as proper technique for strumming and picking, and within an hour, that discouragement had evaporated, even though Jacob’s fingers still worked clumsily to find their correct position on the fretboard.

When it came to learning to play the drums though, Jacob hit the ground running, grasping the basics quickly as he showed a natural gift for rhythm. That the action of hitting things was cathartic all on its own for Jacob, it became even more pleasing when the things he hit produced the sounds he had listened to so earnestly in his childhood.

Still, the guitar was his greatest challenge thus far, and the love he most wished to conquer, and while an acoustic guitar wasn’t quite the image of punk rock he had let himself dream so many times of, he gained a much deeper appreciation for the sound it made, craving those rich, warm, crisp timbers that rang out of it and reverberated throughout the body of the instrument, harmonising with something in Jacob’s soul that found its own little slice of heaven in the melody. Eventually, Jacob was practised enough that he could hum alongside the notes he played, the clumsiness in his fingers dissipating over the months into fluid motions that no longer required him to look at what he was doing with them.

And then he started to sing.

The day the instructor happened upon Jacob singing was almost magical. This was a boy that had come to the detention centre full of aggression and anger, walls built up as tall as the sky and deathly afraid to let anyone see any vulnerability in him. But given half a chance, some time, and the right means to allow him to express himself, and that boy’s soul took flight, bringing with it a smooth, soulful voice that carried so much emotion and an aching passion with it that it was like witnessing the difference between day and night. Jacob hadn’t even noticed the instructor standing in the doorway of the music room, lost in a rendition of Wicked Game that made it evident the boy possessed a strong vocal range and a natural vibrato when he sang, as well as a slight cracking in his vocals when he sang softer notes that further added to the emotional character of the particular piece he was performing.

It was only when he had finished the song that the instructor announced their presence with a small round of applause, Jacob hoping up startled from his seat on one of the desks.

“You have quite the voice on you there, Jacob.” The instructor praised with an appreciative smile. “I think you should use it more often.”

Jacob shrugged awkwardly, highly self-conscious that someone had heard him, but the praise felt good.

“You’ve got a real talent developing there. You should be proud. Keep it up.”


	9. Free Bird

The three years he had been there had passed more quickly than Jacob ever thought it would, but here he was, just days away from both his eighteenth birthday and his release date. Not only would he be free, but also legally an adult and entirely responsible for his own life and what he chose to do with it. Jacob would have been lying if he said the prospect of it didn’t scare him a little.

In the time he’d been at the detention centre, his unruly behaviour had gotten straightened out and with unrestricted access to the centre's educational programmes, Jacob had acquired his GED a little earlier than he would have gotten his high school diploma and graduated by more conventional means. This meant that he would be walking out of the place with at least something to show for it to help him find employment that would assist him in affording accommodation once his six months in a halfway house were up.

The Warden had called Jacob into his office to discuss this very matter and ask Jacob if he had any plans for what he was going to do once he was on the outside.

Jacob wasn’t entirely sure and told Warden Stone exactly that, hoping for some guidance or at the very least a few ideas to help point him in the right direction. Stone was well aware that a kid like Jacob needed some sort of structure and routine in his life or he’d quickly devolve back to his old, destructive and potentially violent habits, and that would likely have him back behind bars before too long, so he made a recommendation based on his own experiences; the military. The eldest of the Seed brothers had never once considered it before that moment. The most exposure Jacob had ever had to anything even vaguely relating to the military was what he had seen on television and in movies, so that might have coloured his decision to take the Warden’s advice just a little, though he promised to give it a few weeks after he was released before he signed up, just to see if he felt any different about the idea once he’d gotten a taste of being back out in the world and under his own reconnaissance for once in his life.

On the morning of his eighteenth birthday, five days before Christmas, Jacob was allowed to have his breakfast before he was escorted from the wing of the detention centre that had been his home for the better part of the last three years, given clothing to wear since he would no longer be in the mandatory uniform of the centre, and whatever possessions he’d had on him when he arrived finally returned, which amounted to a few dollars in crumpled bills and some pocket change. Once the I’s were dotted and the T’s crossed on his release paperwork, a guard walked him out of the main entrance of the centre's administration building to a waiting bus that would take him to the halfway house one county over.

There were three other boys on the bus with him that day, but they were not going to the halfway house. Those three had families and homes to go back to, with parents and siblings waiting for them when they stopped off.

Jacob felt more than a twinge of sadness that, where he was going, he didn’t have anyone to welcome him home. He didn’t even know where John and Joseph were now, and any hope that he would be able to locate them and take over guardianship was long gone, as the records were sealed and Jacob had no means to afford legal representation to get him anywhere on that front.

So off he went the halfway house, alone on that converted school bus, painted blue and bearing the obvious identification of a custodial vehicle.

The halfway house reminded Jacob too much of the orphanage of his childhood, the nondescript brick building blending in with every other structure on the street, aside from a small sign by the door that announced its purpose. Even inside, the protocols were almost identical, from the filling out of paperwork and brief introductions to the superintendents that oversaw everything to the assignment of a room and a rundown of the rules that governed the place.

The occupants had a curfew and were required to be respectful and polite, and any sort of criminal activity was forbidden under the conditions of their release from whichever institution had held them previously. Beyond that, they could come and go as they pleased. They were also responsible for their own belongings, including food, and as well as his own room, Jacob was given a designated cabinet and fridge space in the communal kitchen area, though it quickly became apparent that few of the occupants actually did much cooking beyond heating up frozen and tinned foods, including Jacob himself.

Jacob was given a room on the second floor. It wasn’t much bigger than the cell he’d lived in at the detention centre, but it was marginally more comfortable, given that the mattress on the twin bed was thicker and less lumpy, and he had a table and chair, a closet to hang clothes in when he acquired some, and a small television that was hooked up to a basic cable connection, which was a luxury he’d never had before.

He had not been left completely without a means of supporting himself until he got a job. As he didn’t really have any personal possessions or any clothing beyond what was on his back and a few hand-me-down items that had been donated to the halfway house, the government allowed for a small maintenance cheque to be issued on a weekly basis so that he could get on his feet. If it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t have to pay any bills while he was at the halfway house, the cheque wouldn’t have come close to being a liveable amount, but as it was, it would get him a few basic necessities and enough to feed him if he was careful how he spent it.

Less than two weeks had passed since he got there, and he had been churning over the idea of enlisting in the military the entire time, particularly the part where Warden Stone had explained that even in basic training, Jacob would be paid regularly from the day he started training, and food and accommodation would be provided for free as part of his service if he chose to live on base wherever he was posted to.

The prospect was certainly attractive to a kid that had essentially come from nothing, so shortly into the new year, Jacob left the halfway house and took the bus downtown to locate the local recruitment office and sign up.

By the end of January, Jacob was on a bus to Fort Benning for basic training, having completed all his requirements for enlisting. This time, the bus was full, and Jacob no longer felt the apprehension and fear that he had experienced when he left the detention centre. He still missed his brothers desperately, and he still didn’t have a whole lot in terms of personal possessions, but from what the Army recruiter had told him, all he needed was identification, anything relevant to his medical history that would need to be disclosed, and the right attitude; all of which he had.

More paperwork, more introductions, another room, though this one was a dormitory with more than two dozen other recruits, filled from end to end with identical, pristine bunkbeds that were quickly claimed. When Jacob found an available bunk, he also found another kid about his age, though they were shorter and even scrawnier than Jacob was, with blonde spiky hair and a tan that suggested the kid had grown up somewhere on the coast. He introduced himself with a tentatively extended hand, giving his name as Joel Miller. Jacob obliged and returned the courtesy, sort of glad that he was not the only one around that looked as fresh-faced as he did with his red hair and freckles.

Joel seemed shy but friendly, perhaps just nervous about what to expect from military life, and he asked Jacob which bunk he preferred. Given that Jacob was already clearing six foot tall and Joel came in at around the five foot nine mark, it made more sense for Jacob to take the top bunk as it was easier for him to get up there, so an agreement was quickly reached.

The conversation was quickly cut short when the drill sergeant arrived and informed the new recruits that they were heading off to get their mandatory regulation haircut, as well as pick up their uniforms and gear, so they better get their asses into line and move out.

They were led from the barracks across to another building and into what appeared to be a gym hall that was empty aside from a row of five chairs, and five other soldiers waiting, each holding electric hair clippers. A few of the recruits who had longer hair baulked slightly at the thought of having their precious locks shaved off, but Jacob had kept his hair relatively short out of habit from Juvie, and Joel would only be losing an inch or so of his sun-kissed golden hair, so neither were as fazed as the others as they waited in line for their turn.

Once they’d both been given a buzzcut right down to the scalp, Jacob could barely stifle a giggle when he realised that Joel had a slight tan line where his hair used to be, the shaved area a few shades whiter than the rest of him. Jacob didn’t have this problem. Being a redhead, Jacob was naturally pale, to begin with, so he essentially had the exact opposite problem in that he generally went pink in the sun instead of tanning, and was more prone to sunburn, a problem he’d suffered often during those hellish months on the farm.

A little playful mockery was slung in Joel’s direction, Jacob delighted to find the banter well-received when Joel rubbed his bald head and joked that the ladies back East would love his new look. With that, the beginnings of friendship were formed and any apprehension either might have had about basic dissipated in finding common ground.


	10. The Way Out Is Through

He was getting used to the 4.30 am wakeup calls, Jacob hopping down from the top bunk with gusto while Miller groaned as he shoved back his blankets, half-grumbling under his breath about needing coffee, quiet enough so that the drill sergeant didn’t hear.

This was how every day started during basic training, and both recruits had gotten through the gruelling aspects of the first few weeks, spent on getting everyone’s asses into shape and used to routines, discipline and starting to learn all of the skills that would eventually make them a soldier if they didn’t wash out. Those few weeks had weeded out half a dozen from the group who had started the same time Jacob and Miller did, sending them packing when they decided they weren’t cut out for being yelled at constantly until the word ‘why’ was surgically removed from their vocabulary.

Jacob quickly grew to enjoy the physical demands of training, taking to it like a duck to water. There was still a part of him that craved rebellion against any sort of authority, but the strict routine and structure of his days allowed him to put it aside in favour of thriving in this new environment, and the eldest of the Seed siblings found he had an interest in learning just how far he could push himself, both mentally and physically.

By the end of the third week, he could confidently and quickly disassemble, clean and reassemble his M4 rifle, catching his first bit of praise from the drill sergeant and feeding that part of him that needed to be told that he was doing a good job. After that, Jacob threw himself fully into the role, determined to become the best damn soldier he was capable of being.

When it came time to start putting those M4’s to use out on the range, Jacob’s rifle had become almost an extension of himself, exactly as the Army aimed to do with all recruits, and while it took Miller a little longer to get the hang of accounting for recoil, Jacob’s naturally heavier and sturdier physique, along with taking in every tiny bit of instruction given to him, had him mastering each challenge put before him, quickly moving on to the ranges that had targets at further distances and pop-up targets, before he was then allowed to try his skill with grenades and a grenade launcher. Each time, he demonstrated an ability to quickly learn and excel in whatever he turned his hand to, especially if it earned him more praise and with it a sense of pride and accomplishment he’d never been given by the Old Man.

Thankfully, Miller had been assigned Jacob’s battle buddy, so the expectation of working as a team was an easier task when they had already formed a firm friendship in the first week of training. The relationship was symbiotic, in that, for the first time, Jacob had someone in his peer group who wasn’t related to him and that actually liked him for who he was without seeming like they were only trying to get something out of him, and Miller had a training buddy that actively encouraged his progress rather than treating him like a burden like he’d seen some of the other recruits do with their buddies who might be less fit or skilled.

This became no more apparent than when they had to navigate the obstacle course. Naturally, Jacob could complete the run solo without any issue, given that he had a height advantage and had already built up at least a basic level of fitness and upper body strength in Juvie. Miller didn’t have that, so he faced a greater challenge with obstacles that required climbing, but when they had to complete the course as a pair, Jacob helped him make those climbs with ease, practically hoisting Miller’s entire weight off his feet, though discretely enough to not draw the attention of the drill sergeant who would have no doubt made them both drop and do push-ups as punishment for Jacob _carrying_ Miller, despite this being the exact kind of teamwork they were meant to be displaying.

Eventually, though, Miller caught up and was just as fit and able as Jacob, and even surpassed in areas where his smaller stature was more of an advantage, so between the two, Miller and Jacob made for a perfect team, utilising each other’s strengths to bolster their individual shortcomings.

The friendship between the pair grew to the level of comfort that, one night during mail call, Miller finally plucked up the courage to ask Jacob why he never got any mail, as Miller received some at least a couple of time a week. He knew that Jacob had come straight from Juvie to the military, but not a whole lot about his life before that, especially about family.

Jacob had gotten real quiet at the question, Miller instantly getting the impression that he’d overstepped and thinking he should apologise and retract it until Jacob gave him an answer, explaining that the reason he didn’t get any mail from anyone was that he and his brothers were removed from their family home and dumped into the foster system when they were kids, that their Old Man had died in jail a couple of years ago while Jacob was still in Juvie, and that, because Jacob had been incarcerated and separated from his brothers, he had no idea where they were, or if either of them had any idea where he was, so no correspondence could be exchanged, even if the system would allow it, since Joseph and John were still minors and assumedly still wards of the state, so any records on their whereabouts would be sealed, barring their older brother from accessing them without an expensive and lengthy legal challenge.

Miller apologised anyway after Jacob told the abridged version of his story, wishing him well in finding his brothers when he was in a better, more financially viable position to do so. Jacob shrugged the notion away for now. After all, chances were he would have better luck in finding his brothers once they had both aged out of the system and no longer subject to having their locations kept under lock and key in some administration building somewhere, and Jacob quickly turned the focus of the conversation back onto Miller.

“How come you get so much mail? Your family must write to you at least a dozen times a week.” Jacob retorted, trying to lighten the atmosphere and shift his mood away from thoughts of his brothers.

“Not all from family,” Miller answered, a smirk spreading across his face.

“Oh? Friends then?”

“Yeah, friends. With benefits.”

Jacob frowned, mildly confused. He’d heard the term used before, even laughing along with the person using it, but he didn’t actually know what it meant and letting anyone see that he had some aspect of himself that was a little naïve was something Jacob wouldn’t allow to happen.

“Stacy, Amber, Ashley, Heather and Tyler,” Miller announced, punctuating each name with the plucking of an envelope from the stack in his hand.

“So, you got a bunch of girlfriends back home?” Jacob half-asked, half-stated with a slow nod of his head as he caught on to the phrases meaning.

“Something like that. I like to keep my options open, and apparently, some people think being in the military is hot, so”

That wasn’t the reason Miller enlisted. Sure, it might be an added bonus, but Miller came from a family that had a multigenerational tradition of military service that stretched back to before Pearl Harbour, with this Miller just being the latest in a long line of Millers who had served, including his own father who had been wounded in action just a year earlier in the Gulf War.

Jacob hadn’t considered the impact serving in the military might have on his attractiveness to other people before. Hell, he hadn’t really considered his attractiveness to other people in any capacity since Juvie hadn’t exactly been conducive to meeting and getting to know anyone for the purpose of dating. Jacob hadn’t even spoken to any girls his own age since before the fire at the farm, and then they were just classmates and would often either avoid him completely or make fun of him for a number of things that ranged from his red hair and freckles to the fact that he was a foster kid and his Old Man was in jail.

Back then, Jacob thought that most girls his own age were cruel, spiteful, shallow creatures and decided to pay them no mind until such a time when they grew out of that behaviour, whenever that was supposed to happen. He had been sent to Juvie before that time came.

That Miller not only had a girlfriend but possibly several, was intriguing to Jacob in a way that got him revisiting his previous decision to swear off romantic relationships. Yes, Jacob might still have ginger hair and freckles, but he was not a scrawny little kid getting bounced around foster homes anymore. Now he was a solid six foot one, athletic and starting to fill out quite well thanks to the regime of physical training they were being put through to turn them into soldiers.

Maybe if all those kids who had been cruel to him in elementary school saw him now, they might change their tune and reconsider their opinion of him.

If that ever happened, Jacob would enjoy laughing in their faces as they had done with him.


End file.
